Will the next credit crisis and financial failing begin in 2018?

Ten years have passed since the crisis of 2008.  Overall, things have been getting worse, not better.

Modern financial markets have become accustomed to boom and bust cycles.  These cycles happen as a result of central banks exercising tyrannical control over the global monetary system.  Each cycle begins with a boom, leads to a bust, and culminates in war.  Central banks openly admit their roles in helping finance wars.  The cycle has repeated itself twice in the last century and lies on the precipice of its third completion.

The boom-bust cycle

For the past 105 years, America has had its economy and financial future ensnared by the central banking system.  Ever since the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, a cycle of economic booms and busts has become the norm.  This artificial cycle has become so accepted that few even question its origin, let alone envision a world without it. 

Throughout history, the cycles have three primary parts, each part being further divisible into smaller phases.  First, the credit cycle enjoys a brilliant expansion.  The economy is booming, there are jobs aplenty, people are making money, everyone is happy, and all is right with the world.  An example of this would be the so-called “roaring twenties”, referring to the decade preceding The Great Depression.  This is what’s referred to as the boom.

Second, a crisis, or “credit crunch” occurs.  At this point, banks stop lending, liquidity vanishes, businesses go bankrupt, stocks selloff, and chaos ensues.  Banks may even fail, as they did in 2008 prior to being bailed out by governments and the central banks who own them. 

For those who are betting on much greater U.S. stock market gains ahead, please realize just how overvalued the market is currently (it's worse than in 1929!). The odds are against much further gains. You need to be realistic. https://t.co/UUu9ltAzyw pic.twitter.com/yHDcYofXID

— Jesse Colombo (@TheBubbleBubble) February 14, 2018

The crisis of the 1930s has a reputation of being more severe due to its effects being more visible.  People waited in long bread lines to eat, unemployment was rampant and not hidden by people dropping out of the labor force, and banks were allowed to fail, resulting in millions of people losing their life savings overnight. 

By contrast, today we have the opposite: food stamps in the form of Electronic Benefits Cards masks the severity of people being unable to afford food, the official unemployment rate remains at a record low because those who give up looking for work are not counted in the official statistics, and banks were bailed out, leading to the illusion of business continuing as usual.

War and banks

The third phase of this central bank-induced cycle has no direct correlation to the cycle itself on the surface.  Yet it always follows.  The third and final action that happens after an economic bust is war.

World War I began in 1914, just a year after the creation of the Federal Reserve.  The Federal Reserve Act also enacted the income-tax in order to aid in financing the war effort.  President Woodrow Wilson gave a speech on October 13, 1917, proclaiming cooperation among the nation’s banks to be of paramount importance to the peaceful war effort.  In addition, European bankers had been working since at least 1887 to keep the nations of Europe under an insurmountable debt burden to pay for war armaments. 

Without financing from central banks, nations would not have the ability to war with one another like they have during the past century.  The Federal Reserve itself admits this to be part of its role in the economy.  In 1943, the Federal Reserve board of governors stated its intention to help with all efforts of funding World War II.  This war began following the bust of the 1930s.  The next world war will happen once the current credit cycle completes in a bust the likes of which the world has never seen.

The coming crisis

Many mainstream publications have been warning of an imminent economic catastrophe for years now.  But in the first few months of 2018, their collective voices have grown quite stronger.  Desmond Lachman, former macro-economist at the International Monetary Fund, recently wrote a piece for U.S. News entitled “A Crisis is Coming.”  In it, he describes the financial conditions today as being far worse than they were during 2008 by any metric. 

Debt levels have grown out of control, massive asset bubbles have appeared in sectors beyond the housing industry, and interest rates have been too low for too long.  Even a modest increase in interest rates will cause debt levels to be unsustainable.  

In addition, the Independent notes that wage growth in the UK is rising at its fastest pace since the 2008 financial crisis.  This corroborates what Lachman says in his U.S. News piece about economic conditions overheating.  Wage growth indicates inflation.  Inflation leads to rising interest rates.  Rising interest rates lead to higher debt payments.  Those payments will become so large that governments will have no way to pay them.  The only way out will be war.

A Third World War

As dire as the economic conditions look, they pale in comparison to the current geopolitical landscape.  Not since the Cold War have tensions between adversarial nations been quite so high.  How might such nations react in the midst of a historic financial collapse?  If history is any guide, the answer makes itself apparent.  As Marc Faber has said, “when everything collapses, then we go to war.”  It can’t be said any simpler. 

The coming crisis will be the biggest yet, and so will the war that follows.  Entire nations will go bankrupt.  It’s possible that entire nations could be destroyed in the conflict that ensues. 

World events have already begun to align with such an undesirable outcome.  The election of Donald Trump, for example, provides a convenient scapegoat for the whole ordeal.  Rather than focusing on central banks and their role in the crisis, all the world’s attention will have been turned to Trump as the ultimate harbinger of destruction.

Despite the fact that it matters not who holds political power, this will be the conclusion of most of the public.  Keep in mind, however, that politicians hold absolutely zero sway over monetary policy.  Central banks have total control when it comes to economic decisions.  And through this mechanism, they control economies, currencies, and ultimately, the course of world events.  Even in leading the human race to ruin, too many remain blind to the banks that have been guiding us there for generations.